No carbon tax in Sask.'s climate change plan

The federal environment minister says a climate change strategy released Monday by the Saskatchewan government doesn’t hit a standard set by the Canadian government in asking all provinces to establish a carbon pricing plan.

“Based on what’s in today’s plan, Saskatchewan’s price likely wouldn’t hit our standard, because it applies only to heavy industry instead of being economy-wide,” Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna said in a Facebook statement.

“Of course, we hope that will change as Saskatchewan’s government turns its plan into action. We’ll be assessing each jurisdiction’s performance against our standard later next year … We’re going to keep working with Saskatchewan to tackle climate change and drive clean growth.”

The federal government wants a price on carbon emissions, starting in 2018 at $10 a tonne and rising to $50/tonne in 2022. The Saskatchewan Party government has fought against the idea since it first came to light, but in the plan it released on Monday, the province draws largely on ideas it raised as long ago as 2010.

The new plan, dubbed Prairie Resilience: A Made-in-Saskatchewan Climate Change Strategy, does not include an explicit carbon tax and lowers the threshold of what is considered a “heavy emitter” from 50,000 tonnes of emissions to 25,000 tonnes, which is largely the same as a policy the province advanced seven years ago.

In 2010, Premier Brad Wall’s government passed environmental legislation requiring large carbon emitters to pay into a fund for investing in low-emission technologies. That law was never put into force.

Saskatchewan’s strategy also calls for a “carbon offset” to be purchased by emitters to offset their greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a best performance credit for companies demonstrating low emissions or investments in reducing their emissions.

Similar policies were contained a white paper Wall released earlier this year.

Allowing companies to purchase offsetting credits or rewarding them for making investments to lower emissions are attributes of many cap-and-trade systems.

“Market-based, really, the market will set what the value of carbon is going to be and so companies will be able to be compliant by taking that approach. Or there is the approach and/or the approach of paying into a technology fund which we will have to set a levy for that,” Duncan said.

The province intends to spend 2018 developing performance standards for each of the industries it plans to regulate, including energy producers. By not capping emissions altogether, Duncan hopes the strategy will continue to allow companies to grow and attract further investment

Whether or not the strategy gets put into actual practice remains to be seen.

This is the latest development in an ongoing back-and-forth between Saskatchewan and the federal government over how to reduce emissions.

Saskatchewan’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped 0.7 per cent between 2014 and 2015, according to Canada’s National Inventory Report 2017.

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